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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23339359">no more halos on evergreens</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/firetan/pseuds/aesalon'>aesalon (firetan)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Extended Demo Content, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, kind of????, or at least kinda during the excruciating slow burn development stage??</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 07:48:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,214</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23339359</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/firetan/pseuds/aesalon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>All of the risks she's taken, the provisions and plans she's arranged, and fate instead gifts her with a golden opportunity like this. She doesn't have to worry, now, about the teabags stored in the deepest seams of her luggage, about the sachets of powder hidden in the hems of her trousers. She doesn't even have to be the one to deal the killing blow.</em>
</p><p>  <em>A mediocre tragedy.</em></p><p> </p><p>A slight reinterpretation of the set accident with Irina &amp; Jasper.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hise Pirate/Jasper</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>no more halos on evergreens</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/17711228">An Improper Set</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/quilleth/pseuds/quilleth">quilleth</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><em>"If this were the last snowfall,<br/><b>no more halos on evergreens.</b><br/>If this were my last glimpse of winter,<br/>what would these eyes see?"</em><br/>-The Last Snowfall by Vienna Teng</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In Hise, there are legends. Fairy tales, meant to scare naughty children and teach them to respect the sea, respect and fear the power of the world around them. Stories about great monsters living beneath the waves, trickster spirits who inhabit the trees and coves and delight in luring mortals to their doom. Beasts that take the shape of comely men and women, who can freeze a person with their gaze alone. Like spider venom. Every child in Hise learns the stories, playing fables out in the streets and remembering that they are small and must never forget it. They grow into pirates, sharp of wit and mind, who know just how to watch over their shoulders, how to pay homage to the tide and starlit sky for the gift of their presence and the grace of their benevolence.</p><p></p><div>
  <p>Fairy tales may be naught but legends, but their monsters are as real as a shipwreck dragged below the waves.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>On Fireday eve, in the practice room filled with dark-shadowed sets and a dark-shadowed figure running away, they are real. When Irina steps forward, creeps further on bare feet and spotless floorboards, the monsters are as real as the roof above her head and the nervous drumbeat of the heart within her chest.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Wood creaks and splinters, a great architect's greatest heartbreak, and the gaze of a gorgon turns Irina to stone.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>This is it, then.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>This is where she dies.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Fortune, Irina thinks in slow-motion, must favor her in the most twisted of ways. Time eddies and stills like tidepools when the sea withdraws, letting her watch the slow collapse of both the towering set and her life with achingly sharp clarity. All of the risks she's taken, the provisions and plans she's arranged, and fate instead gifts her with a golden opportunity like this. She doesn't have to worry, now, about the teabags stored in the deepest seams of her luggage, about the sachets of powder hidden in the hems of her trousers. She doesn't even have to be the one to deal the killing blow.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>They'll think it was an accident, nothing more and nothing less.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>A mediocre tragedy.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>The gaze of a gorgon freezes her eyes wide open and her feet to the ground, but the song of sirens burns in her ears and pushes against her like storm-winds at sea. Wails with the chorus of a thousand desires and a thousand sins. <em>Not yet, not today.</em></p>
</div><div>
  <p>Irina steps back.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Splinters fly as the balcony crashes to the floor bare centimeters from her toes, falling with enough force to break a horse's back. <em>Or a human's</em>, the voice in her mind mourns, and Irina tries to remember how to breathe. Wood smacks against her shoulder, leaving an ache. Her cheek stings, and the fingers she presses against it come away spotted with blood. The floor groans beneath its newfound burden, its once-spotless surface now scratched and buried beneath the wreckage of what could have been a disaster (what could have been salvation). If it had fallen on a person, they would be dead. Irina breathes.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>In her ears, in the back of her mind, in the stubborn heart still beating beneath her breastbone, the sirens cackle and sing.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Red flashes across her vision, blurring the images before her eyes into a white-hot mirage, and Irina wants to scream. Wants to laugh, a little. Wants to cry even though the tears are already on her cheeks. Wants to scream that it isn't fair, she was ready to go, what gave her body the right to betray her just as fate was about to grant her greatest wish—</p>
</div><div>
  <p>A sob forces its way between her lips, instead, and suddenly it's all she can do to keep from gasping as the floodgates threaten to burst open. Because she's angry — no, furious — and also frustrated, and tired, and afraid, and the practice room echoes like a hall twice its size, and the cuffs around her wrists feel far too small. Irina tears at them, scratches at the worn laces in their metal-rimmed eyelets, wrenches them off of her wrists like shackles she's worn for far too long. Rips the bandages beneath them (fresh this morning, still white and smelling of herbal balm and cleanliness), no energy left to spare the poor fabric its ungracious and sudden demise. They have to come off, she has to get them off, they're shackles and the balcony is in pieces and Irina is so, so tired.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Blunt nails scrape and pull at the young scar tissue marring the undersides of her wrists, and Irina manages to tear the edges bloody before her tears utterly overwhelm her and she collapses to the floor.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Except... except not to the floor.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Except, instead of cold wood and lonely splinters, warm arms catch Irina before she can do much more than list sideways like a drunken sailor, pulling her against a solid chest and a rapid dancing-drum heartbeat. Silver hair, as bright as stars and clean as snow, hangs in her vision as a shaky breath shudders through the body holding her. Irina feels the air catch in her chest before the gates shatter completely and she curls into Jasper's arms, weeping bitterly into his shoulder as the blood from her cut cheek slowly stains his jacket.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>She's still alive, and that reality is terrifying.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Time seems to drag its heels, letting her spend what feels like an eternity buried in Jasper's embrace. Irina's nigh-unflappable butler keeps his spine straight and his voice still, but there are faint tremors in his shoulders and the fingers tangled through her hair shake. His head is bowed, a pale cheek and straight nose pressed against her temple. He's warm.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Irina doesn't want him to let go. Knows he needs to, knows he will because he always does, because whatever she hopes is here can't be. But if he lets go, she'll remember that fate is cruel and unfair. If he lets go, she'll remember that she wants to die, maybe remember it strongly enough to do something about it.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>She can't do that to him. Can't put that weight on top of his oaths, on top of the pressure he already bears. And Jasper's good, so good — good in ways she's not, ways she couldn't be.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>And if she dies, he'll feel responsible. Worse, he'll be held responsible.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>So she has to wait.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Oh, Fate is cruel. Gorgon's gaze and siren's song, fate is cruel, to dangle salvation in front of her so readily and then pull it just out of reach every time. On horseback. Beneath balconies. In the quiet of her bedroom, alone, where she should never have been found.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>The world is so determined to keep Irina alive, where less than a decade before it couldn't wait for her to die. If she weren't one step away from staking herself on the nearest shard of splintered wood, she might laugh at the irony.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Presently, she feels Jasper shift and lean back, pulling away to look down at her with an impressively stoic expression. Time's up, then. "Lady Irina, it would be wise to remove yourself from this scene before it is discovered. Being connected to this event would be undesirable, to say the least, in consideration of the ambassadors' arrival approaching."</p>
</div><div>
  <p>"Right, of course." Irina doesn't look at the wood. Can't let herself be tempted. "I understand."</p>
</div><div>
  <p>He steps back further, hands slipping from her back to rest on her upper arms. Like he knows he needs to let go, but can't make his body obey. "Can you walk?"</p>
</div><div>
  <p>There are a few splinters piercing her bare feet, and Irina's almost proud of how little her hands shake as she pulls the bloody shards out and wraps them in her discarded bandages. The scratches and holes don't hurt. Nothing does. "I'll manage. None of the blood is under my feet, so I won't leave prints."</p>
</div><div>
  <p>"I see." Something in his eyes dances just out of reach, and he lifts the bloody splinters and bandages from her hands with far too much poise. Tucks them away in some or another pocket, does the same with her abandoned cuffs, and offers her a hand.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Irina doesn't want to be touched. She wants to be touched. Wants him to touch her. Does she want to feel nothing? Or something?</p>
</div><div>
  <p>She places her hand in his, and lets him lead her back to her rooms.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Leading, as it turns out, becomes carrying about ten paces down the hall, when her legs give out beneath her and Jasper sweeps her into his arms before she has time to hit the floor. If she were anyone else, Irina might be flustered by the action, or the sudden proximity — it's certainly quite the shift, being held in this way. As it is, she can barely muster the energy to lean against his shoulder and whisper an apology. The words sound weak, even to her ears. Jasper is warm, but she still can't feel a thing.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>His voice is unfairly gentle. "You have nothing to apologize for, my Lady."</p>
</div><div>
  <p>It's a good thing, Irina imagines distantly as they make their way through the halls, that the hour is late. They certainly make an unconventional and highly improper sight — the lady in naught but trousers and a loose blouse, barefoot and carried in her butler's arms like some sort of giddy bride. If one ignores the blood and splinters, of course. Servants might look the other way — they seem to like her well enough, after last week's fiasco, and they respect Jasper. Aside from the one from the cliff, of course, but he seems to be the exception rather than the rule. So they’re safe from the staff, at least. Delegates — or worse, chaperones — wouldn't be so kind. But luckily, they're all fast asleep, dreaming of frivolous theatre and love and whatever silly things lords and ladies fuss over at night. </p>
</div><div>
  <p>(Luckily, because if she'd died, nobody would have been able to find her this time until it was too late. If only fate could be so kind.)</p>
</div><div>
  <p>(Should she have been glad, then?)</p>
</div><div>
  <p>When they arrive at her bedchamber, Jasper barely has to adjust his grip before pushing the door quietly inwards. It hadn't been locked — all of the doors in the guest quarters lock from the outside, and Irina doesn't have the key. Not to mention that she'd planned to return.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Well, a part of her had. The rest...</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Her voice feels run dry, as though the sirens whispering to her have stolen it for their own and left her with nothing. Jasper sets her gently on the bed, that unreadable look in his eyes, and leaves without a word. The door is whisper-soft behind him, and Irina says nothing. The words are all trapped in her throat, it seems, frozen and turned to stone. They weigh in her chest like anchors, beating in time with the traitorous heart beneath her breastbone. Foolish, sentimental thing, weak to siren songs and pitiful feelings. She could have been dead, it could have been over, and yet what has she to show for it all but cut feet and a lost voice?</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Hair tickles her cheeks, and Irina realizes absently that it's fallen loose from whatever she'd done to it before. She ought to— to braid it for sleep, oughtn't she? Is that what is normal? Everything slips into the fog, and she can't remember.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>When she tries to part the strands, her hands shake too fiercely to work.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Before she can even despair over this new betrayal, silver glimmers in the corner of her blurred vision and cool fingers brush against hers. There is a small tray on the desk, set with a bowl of water and bandages, salve and tea. Jasper stands beside her, something so dangerously raw in his gaze as he brushes the hair away from her face. Every touch is feather-light, cleaning the cut on her cheek, winding bandages around the stinging marks on her feet.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Jasper pulls the length of her hair over her left shoulder and begins braiding it, loose and soft. One hand brushes, tender and near-subconscious, against her cheek.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>It's the last nail in a coffin that has been waiting in the morgue for many days — or indeed, many years — and not even a velvet lining can protect her as the wood cracks and crumbles. Forget sirens and gorgons, forget foolish superstitions and sailors' tales — the weight of everything is crashing down around her, and Irina feels as though she'll be buried dead or alive. A dry sob wracks her body, shaking through each of her ribs and scraping itself sharp against the lining of her throat as she curls inward. By the sea, by the sky, it hurts so badly. She wanted to die, she yearned for it with ever pulse of blood through her veins, and yet now there is nothing in her heart but relief.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>Gentle hands rest against her shoulders, ghost across the scars marring her cheek. Cool lips press against her forehead, whispering soft assurances that Irina cannot hear over the aching roar of a life's purpose crumbling into a heartbeat.</p>
</div><div>
  <p>She remains, against all her endeavors otherwise, alive.</p>
</div>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Look, I saw quill's set accident fic and absolutely loved it, and I'd wanted to do a version of the scene for Irina anyways (bc man, all these murder attempts are really messing with her lowkey suicidal ass, and it also fills the hole in my heart that is Jaspermancers not getting a set accident scene), so... it was inevitable.</p><p>Also, I started this fic OVER A YEAR AGO. FUCK ME I GUESS.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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